The Dame

O this is a good book. I come to it just after finishing Francesca Wade's biog of Gertrude Stein - also excellent - and am delighted to see how both women dictated the terms on which they would be "received". Female Art Monsters are a relatively recent phenomenon, for though doubtless Antiquity & the Enlightenment & the Victorians had a few they didn't have the foresight to strike deals with Yale etc to conserve & publish their papers.

Of the two, Muriel appeals more because I go to her novels so often & each time they are stranger & more exciting. She had an episode of psychosis after running The Poetry Society: that chimes too. But I honour the Stein shown by Wade: her laugh was "like a beefsteak", apparently. Take that, chaps.